of emigrants not prepared to submit to the despotic system which the prisoner part of the population could not, and the officials and settlers living on government patronage were not inclined to resist. Succeeding to the absolute powers of Macquarie, in 1824, three years after landing, the Legislative, or rather Executive Council, against the check of which his imperious predecessor had protested, was estabblished. The first chief-justice, the first attorney-general, a solicitor-general, who was also a commissioner of the Court of Requests, a master in chancery, and colonial treasurer, arrived in the colony. Trial by jury took place in the first Court of Quarter Sessions; liberty of the press was conceded; and the Australian, the first colonial newspaper independent of government aid, was published by Mr. Wentworth and Dr. Wardell, and followed by two other journals.
While on this side of the globe we were declaiming and subscribing for the liberties of Greeks, Spaniards, and South Americans, at the antipodes our countrymen were struggling for trial by jury and "unlicensed printing."
Commercial liberty yet remained to be gained. The East India Company claimed the monopoly of trading in the Indian seas, and repeatedly asserted their right by confiscating vessels loaded with produce for Port Jackson. In 1824 the captain of a man-of-war actually seized the ship Almorah, with a valuable cargo of tea and rice, at anchor in Sydney Cove, and sent her as a prize to Calcutta in charge of his lieutenant . Major-General Sir Thomas Brisbane, K.C.B., had acquired a high reputation as a soldier in the Peninsula, and as a man of science. The first observatory in Australia was erected under his auspices. But his government, which only lasted four years, was unpopular, and the political concessions made rendered further concessions inevitable. To this fire was added the fuel of grievances which went home to the pockets of almost all the settlers and traders, and an insult which deeply offended a powerful, united, and intelligent religious community—the Scotch Presbyterians.
The Presbyterians applied in 1823 for assistance to build a Presbyterian church in Sydney, and referred pointedly to the support afforded the "Roman Catholics." The tone of the application appears not to have pleased either Sir Thomas or his secretary, and he returned a bitter reply, of which the following is the concluding paragraph. The style is eminently characteristic of colonial secretaries and governors:—
"When, therefore, the Presbyterians of the colony shall have
